Immunogenicity and protection efficacy of monovalent and polyvalent poxvirus vaccines that include the D8 antigen

Virology. 2006 Nov 25;355(2):164-74. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2006.07.017. Epub 2006 Aug 21.

Abstract

Recent studies have established the feasibility of subunit-based experimental vaccines to protect animals from lethal poxvirus infection. Individual outer membrane proteins from intracellular and extracellular virions of vaccinia virus, when delivered in the form of either DNA vaccines or recombinant protein vaccines produced from baculovirus-infected insect cells, were able to protect mice from the vaccinia virus challenge and rhesus macaques from the monkeypox virus challenge. The polyvalent formulations with various combinations of the four poxvirus antigens (A27, L1, B5 and A33) achieved better protection than the monovalent formulation using only one of these antigens. However, it is not clear whether any of the remaining outer membrane poxvirus proteins can further improve the efficacy of the current polyvalent formulations. In this study, we conducted detailed analysis on the immunogenicity of D8, a previously reported protective antigen from intracellular mature virions. Our results indicated that D8 induced strong protective antibody responses and was effective in improving the efficacy of previously reported polyvalent poxvirus vaccine formulations. Therefore, D8 is an excellent candidate antigen to be included in the final polyvalent subunit-based poxvirus vaccines.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Antibodies, Viral / blood*
  • Body Weight
  • Disease Models, Animal
  • Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay
  • Female
  • Immunoglobulin G / blood
  • Mice
  • Mice, Inbred BALB C
  • Neutralization Tests
  • Survival Analysis
  • Vaccines, DNA / immunology*
  • Vaccines, Subunit / immunology
  • Vaccines, Synthetic / immunology
  • Vaccinia / prevention & control*
  • Vaccinia virus / immunology*
  • Viral Vaccines / immunology*

Substances

  • Antibodies, Viral
  • Immunoglobulin G
  • Vaccines, DNA
  • Vaccines, Subunit
  • Vaccines, Synthetic
  • Viral Vaccines